A second time around

I started this blog to talk about Chance and his journey to hear through his deafness.  Last month Chance had a routine mapping appointment that had been scheduled for months.  His appointment just happened to fall on a day that I would be attending Women's Conference with friends. So my brave husband took most of our kids to the appointment himself.

I was sitting at Women's Conference listening to a speaker when a text came through on my cell phone. Normally I wouldn't pay attention to my phone during a class, but my cell phone was in my hand as I was getting something out of my bag.  When I realized that it was my hubby, I looked to see what he said because I knew he wouldn't text me at Women's Conference unless it was important.  This is what I read:

"Our son is measuring at a moderate to severe hearing loss."

Now, Chance has a hearing loss of course, but this text wasn't about Chance.  It was about one of my other kids.

I just sat there staring at the screen.

Then I texted back something profound like, "Wow."

Then I didn't hear from my husband again.  So when class was over, I tried to call him.  He didn't answer.

You can't just text a mother and tell her that her son has hearing loss and then not answer the phone!

Actually, the logical part of my brain knew what was happening at that moment where my husband was in the audiologists office.  I have been to many such appointments in my lifetime.  I knew the audiologist was running my son through the sounds again or he was talking to my husband about the results of the hearing test.

I texted my husband with, "I know that you are busy but I am dying here call me when you can."

He texted back with "Sorry, I will call you in a minute."

We didn't have texting like this when Chance was diagnosed 11 years ago.

I then went to my next class and started making a fairy wand as part of a humanitarian project.  I have to admit that I was a little distracted and I needed to be able to focus on the instructions for making that fairy wand since I am not a natural at sewing.  Luckily,  there were some women at my table making the same fairy wands so I watched what they were doing and followed.

My phone started to ring, and I dashed out of the room to catch the call.

I had lots of questions like, "NOW WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT HERE?  WASN'T THIS CHANCE'S APPOINTMENT?" Along with:

"Do both ears have a loss?"

"How big of a loss are we talking about again?"

"Will he need hearing aids?"

"Why do they think he has a loss?"

"How is our son taking it?"

"What happened there........how did one of our other kids get into the hearing booth?"

My husband opened up with the whole story.  Our youngest son has been telling us that he can not hear as well out of his left ear.  I actually had made a note to myself to call the school district to have him tested.  Chance's dad just asked the audiologist at the implant appointment if he could test our other son as he had mentioned that he was not hearing as well out of his left ear.

Turns out there was a reason he hasn't been hearing as well out of that ear.

As our son sat in the booth having his hearing tested, my husband was sitting behind the audiologist watching him mark down the results.  Since we are people that are quite familiar with audiograms, my husband knew right away that the left ear had developed some issues.  The left ear was testing at a moderate loss.  Since that initial appointment when the hearing loss was discovered,  the loss has continued to fall.  The fall has been like this:

First visit the loss in the left ear was 50-55db across 500-4000 Hz, dropping to 70-80db in both ears at 6000 and 8000 Hz.  His right ear was between 0 and 10 except for the 6000+Hz range.

Two weeks later his left ear had dropped about 10db across the board, to about 60db up to 4000Hz, then 80 to 90db in both ears at 6000-8000Hz.  His right ear also dropped - now sitting at about 20db loss except for the dive in the 6000+ Hz range.

Another two weeks later showed another 10db loss:  Left ear hitting up to 70 db in some frequencies, and the upper ranges are now 85-90 db.  The right ear now sits at 25-30 db across the board, then 80-85 db at 6000+ Hz.

So, we are in the process of getting MRI's done, seeing doctors and having hearing tests.  We are trying to figure out what is happening to our son's hearing.  The first MRI didn't give us any information, so we had another one done a few days ago that went more in depth. That MRI didn't reveal any reason for the loss either.  We will meet with doctors at a hearing clinic in July to see if they have any ideas about why the hearing is dropping and if there is anything that we can do about it.  Our son went on a round of steroids but his hearing loss continued.

For now, we have a hearing aid on his left ear, and we are watching the right ear.  We have another hearing test scheduled in July and we will see where the loss falls then.

It is like deja-vu.  We have gone through this with hearing loss before.  The difference is, when we found out that Chance had hearing loss, he was already deaf, whether the loss happened all at once or dropped over time, we don't know.  Right now, we are watching a loss that just continues to drop every couple of weeks.  With Chance we didn't watch his hearing drop.

I still have some of the original questions that I had when we started and hopefully we'll find some answers.

Now we have both implants and hearing aids in the house, something we've have never had before.  We are becoming reacquainted with hearing aids again.  They can't get wet at all.  Condensation can build up in the tube leading into the mold and then you need to suction it out.

One person with hearing loss in our house wears their hearing device all day only taking it off to sleep and shower.  The other person with a hearing device takes their device off at times and has to be reminded to put it back on.  I'll let you guess who is who:)